The U.S. Civil War: A Very Short Introduction by Louis P. Masur

Author:Louis P. Masur [Masur, Louis P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780197513699
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2020-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Lee retreated from Gettysburg, but Meade did not counterattack, and his failure to do so enraged Lincoln, especially after rains came and the rising waters of the Potomac prevented Lee from crossing back into Virginia. On July 14, he wrote a letter to Meade: “My dear general, I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape. He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war. As it is, the war will be prolonged indefinitely.” Lincoln decided not to send the rebuke, using back channels instead to get his message to the general.

One of the other successes Lincoln alluded to was Vicksburg, which, on July 4, surrendered to Grant. Pemberton’s force of thirty thousand had been reduced by disease as well as the constant shelling inflicted on the city. The diary of one Mississippi soldier narrated the struggle to survive on quarter rations, weeds, slaughtered mules, and trapped rats. The soldiers sent the commander a petition on June 28: “If you can’t feed us, you had better surrender.” The siege had lasted forty-six days. Pemberton delivered his men and arms. Grant paroled the soldiers, allowing them to go home after they swore not to take up arms again. He used the captured rifles to reequip his men.

On both sides, commentators recognized the momentousness of the event. Jefferson Davis had said that “Vicksburg is the nail head that [holds] the South’s two halves together.” If so, the nail had been pulverized. One Confederate wrote, “This is the most terrible blow that has been struck yet.” Davis, “in the depth of gloom,” confessed “we are now in the darkest hour of our political existence.”

Gideon Welles noted in his diary that “the rejoicing in regard to Vicksburg is immense … [it] has excited a degree of enthusiasm not excelled during the war.” Lincoln wrote to Grant, whom he had never met, and thanked him for “the almost inestimable service you have done the country.” Sherman wired Grant calling it “the best fourth of July since 1776. Of course we must not rest idle, only don’t let us brag too soon.”

Sherman was prescient. More good news arrived with word of the surrender of Port Hudson on July 9, which gave complete control of the Mississippi to the Union. But then New York exploded in riots over the draft. On July 11, names were first drawn in New York in compliance with the Conscription Act passed several months earlier. Two days later, another drawing was to be held, but a crowd of several hundred attacked the draft office. Many of the protesters were Irish immigrants, Democrats who had multiple resentments: that the wealthy could buy substitutes for $300, that the war showed no sign of ending, and that they had to compete for jobs with free blacks, whose numbers they believed would only grow with emancipation. The rioters overwhelmed the police and let loose on the black community a wave of horrific racial violence.

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